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When Research Walks Into the Courtroom: Dr. Ingrid Johnson on abortion access, violence and the stakes for Alaska

Sarah Manriquez, CLA Public Information Office
February 2, 2026
cla-pio@alaska.edu

“I am not a lawyer,” she told the group. “I am a social scientist.”

Dr. Ingrid Johnson began with a disclaimer that has become almost a refrain in her professional life.

It was a gentle correction, but also the heart of her story. Johnson is a criminologist and victimologist, raised in Delta Junction and Fairbanks, a 51�������� Justice alum who went on to earn her PhD in Philadelphia before returning to Alaska to study gender–based violence. In 2023, that work carried her into an Alaska courtroom as an expert witness in a case that could determine who is able to provide abortion care in the state. Her talk for WGSS, “The Impact of Abortion Restrictions on Violence Against Women,” walked students through that case and the research that underpinned her testimony, connecting statewide statistics to the lived realities of survivors of intimate partner violence, particularly in rural Alaska.

From Delta Junction to expert witness

Johnson’s path to the witness stand began long before Planned Parenthood challenged Alaska’s advanced practice clinician (APC) ban.

As an undergraduate at 51��������, she studied justice and learned to ask questions about why laws are written the way they are, how people experience them, and who falls through the gaps. Graduate study at Temple University sharpened those questions into a research agenda focused on gender–based violence and what happens when victims reach out for help.

By 2018 she was back in Alaska, teaching at the Justice Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage and leading the Alaska Victimization Survey, a major statewide effort to measure experiences of intimate partner violence, sexual assault and stalking among adult women.

Her expertise caught the attention of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky and their co–counsel at Legal Voice. In 2019 they filed suit challenging an Alaska statute that barred advanced practice clinicians and physician assistants from performing abortions. The restriction, often called the APC ban, effectively limited procedures to physicians and squeezed the already narrow window of access in a state where abortion is a constitutional right on paper, but often a logistical ordeal in practice.

Planned Parenthood’s legal team wanted to show the court something the statute never mentioned: what happens when the person seeking an abortion is also trying to survive an abusive relationship.

Johnson agreed to help.

What an APC ban looks like in real life

Before she talked about the law, Johnson grounded the audience in what access actually looked like under the APC ban.

When only physicians could perform abortions, clinics in Alaska were able to offer services in short, concentrated windows. Aspiration abortions, the common suction or vacuum procedure early in pregnancy, were available only one or two days per month in Fairbanks and Juneau, one day per week in Anchorage and not at all in Soldotna. Medication abortions, where patients take pills to end an early pregnancy, were limited to one day per week in Fairbanks, Juneau and Soldotna and one to two days per week in Anchorage.

For patients in abusive relationships, those constraints were more than an inconvenience. They could be the difference between acting on a narrow opportunity to leave safely and being pulled deeper into danger.

Early in the case, a judge issued a preliminary injunction that allowed advanced practice clinicians to provide medication abortions while the lawsuit proceeded. The effect was immediate. In Fairbanks, medical abortion access jumped from one day per week to four. Anchorage expanded to six days per week. Juneau and Soldotna tripled their availability.

The numbers showed how a technical rule about who is allowed to provide care can quietly decide who gets care at all.

“No–duh” questions, proven with data

Johnson’s formal role in the case began in 2021, when she was asked to assess how the APC ban might disproportionately affect women in abusive relationships, and especially those living in rural Alaska. She did not collect new data for the case. Instead, she did what social scientists often do best: she read.

She reviewed her own work with the Alaska Victimization Survey and dug through dozens of studies, giving particular weight to systematic reviews and meta–analyses that synthesize many individual projects into a clearer picture.

One of those AVS findings still catches people in the room off guard. Nearly seventy percent of adult women in Alaska report having experienced some form of intimate partner abuse in their lifetime, which can include physical violence, psychological aggression, coercive control and entrapment. Almost one in five reported that a partner tried to control their reproductive health, for example by refusing contraception, sabotaging birth control, or pressuring them to become pregnant.

She paired those Alaska numbers with national and international research that documented how intimate partner violence and pregnancy collide.

Studies show that women experiencing intimate partner violence are more likely to have unintended pregnancies and face higher risks of miscarriage, preterm birth and other medical complications. Other research has found that pregnancy itself can increase a woman’s risk of being killed, particularly when an abusive partner is involved. Homicide by an intimate partner is a leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women.

Some of these findings, Johnson told the audience, simply formalize what many survivors already know.

“Sometimes what we do with research is answer the ‘no-duh’ questions,” she said with a wry smile. “We take what seems obvious and actually prove it.”

Abusive partners who want to maintain control may sabotage birth control or force pregnancies. The same partners may also block access to abortion, either directly through threats or indirectly by closely monitoring money, movement and communication. For women who see ending a pregnancy as one possible way out of a dangerous relationship, those tactics can close off one of the few available exits.

Rural Alaska and the geography of risk

If the APC ban made abortion harder to get in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Johnson explained, it could be nearly insurmountable for victims living in Alaska’s off–road communities.

More than eighty percent of Alaska’s communities are not connected to the road system. Reaching the nearest abortion provider often requires multiple legs of travel: a boat trip to a hub village, a small plane flight to a regional center, then another flight to Anchorage or Fairbanks. Every step is vulnerable to weather delays and costs that quickly reach into the thousands of dollars.

Layer intimate partner violence on top of that geography, and the barriers multiply.

Abusive partners may insist on controlling family finances, checking bank statements, or holding the only credit card. They may forbid travel, ask detailed questions about appointments, or refuse to provide childcare. In small communities, privacy can be nearly impossible to protect.

Johnson asked the audience to imagine trying to arrange travel, pay for flights, secure a place to stay, organize childcare and schedule a clinic appointment, all without the abuser noticing money missing, days away from home, or calls to unfamiliar numbers. Many women, she explained, can only attempt that kind of trip if they can attach it to something that seems acceptable to the partner: a medical referral, a sporting event, a family obligation in town.

That balancing act is difficult even when clinics can offer care most days of the week. When services are available just once or twice a month, the odds of finding a window that aligns with both safety and the medical gestational limit grow slimmer.

The APC ban, she argued, took that already narrow window and squeezed it further, with consequences most visible for those who already face the greatest danger.

Holding her ground under cross–examination

Johnson’s expert report spelled out these links between intimate partner violence, reproductive control, abortion access and rural barriers. It drew heavily on work conducted outside Alaska, which the state’s attorneys seized on.

At one point, she told the WGSS audience, the state tried to persuade the judge to exclude her testimony entirely because she had not conducted a brand–new study specifically on the Alaska law. Johnson and the legal team responded by walking the court through how social science works: how knowledge accumulates across many carefully designed studies, and how researchers use robust patterns from multiple contexts to understand risk. Using secondary sources in this case was of particular importance because conducting a new study would have been time-consuming and expensive, and very difficult to do given Alaska’s overall small population size, particularly in rural areas.

The judge agreed. Her testimony stayed in.

In 2023 Johnson sat for a two-hour deposition with the state, answering detailed questions about methods, data and interpretation. That fall, she testified before the court by Zoom. Even through a screen, she admitted, it was intimidating to turn the nuances of dozens of studies into clear, concise answers under oath.

In September 2024, the Alaska Superior Court struck down the APC ban. Planned Parenthood and Legal Voice had won at that level. The state appealed, and the question is now before the Alaska Supreme Court.

For students in the room, the timeline was a reminder that landmark decisions do not arrive all at once. They take shape in long, slow arcs, each brief and hearing built on the kind of painstaking, often invisible research that faculty like Johnson conduct year after year.

“What can we do?” Students look for a role

During the question and answer session, a student raised the question hanging quietly in the air. If the fate of the case now rests with the Alaska Supreme Court, what can ordinary people do?

In terms of the legal process itself, Johnson told them, not much. Supreme Court justices are not swayed by petitions or tweets.

But the conversation quickly widened. Faculty and students talked about ways to support survivors and reproductive justice outside the courtroom, from volunteering with local organizations to joining campus groups like Generation Action or the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, to learning more about how laws and policies shape access to care. Small acts, they suggested, can strengthen the social safety net that survivors rely on long before and after any lawsuit.

The discussion pulled the focus back to the values that run through Johnson’s work: believing victims, listening carefully, and using evidence to push systems toward greater safety and equity.

Research in service of community

As the event wrapped up and students signed up for email lists or lingered in the doorway to ask one more question, Johnson slipped back into the role she seems most at home in: a local researcher, rooted in Alaska, committed to making her work matter beyond the academy.

She reminded the group that she is just down the hall in the Justice Department, still teaching, still studying how survivors of violence seek help and how formal and informal networks can respond better. Her testimony in the APC case is one chapter of that ongoing story, not the end of it.

In many ways, that is the quiet power of an afternoon like this in Gruening 503H. A 51�������� alum returns as faculty to unpack a high–stakes court case, not as breaking news, but as a lesson in how research, lived experience and law intersect. Students see how a Justice degree or a WGSS minor can travel from survey design and literature reviews to real–world impact.

And they see, in Dr. Ingrid Johnson, what it looks like when a scholar carries the stories and safety of Alaska women into the places where rights are decided.

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WGSS guest speaker series
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies hosts guest speakers at each monthly meeting, held the first Wednesday of each month in Gruening 503H from 1:00–2:30 pm. The next event is Wednesday, Feb. 4, featuring Assistant Professor of History Mary Ludwig on Alaska Native students at Carlisle Indian Industrial School and how many used that education to strengthen, not erase, their communities.

Pizza, brownies, drinks, and a Zoom option are provided. Reservations are encouraged but not required—contact WGSS Program Coordinator Carol Gray. All are welcome.

Looking ahead: Restorative Justice Symposium
Johnson and Rei Shimizu of the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Social Work co-host the annual Restorative Justice Symposium, coming up March 30–April 1, 2026. The three-day event will be virtual; watch the for registration and panel details, and mark your calendar!